Socceroos forward Awer Mabil is set to walk onto hallowed turf and play football royalty on Wednesday morning (7am AEDT) as his Midtjylland outfit takes on Liverpool at Anfield in the Champions League.
The clash is one of eight for the morning, with Bayern Munich taking on Lokomotiv Moscow and Shakhtar Donetsk hosting Inter Milan in the early kick-offs (4:55am AEDT), before fixtures between Marseille and Manchester City, Monchengladbach and Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and RB Salzburg, Porto and Olympiacos, and Atalanta and Ajax.
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PL MD6: The major headlines
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Midtjylland won last season’s Danish Superliga before navigating its way through the Champions League qualifying stages, with Mabil scoring in the final qualifier against Slavia Prague.
The Danish side started its Champions League campaign with a 4-0 loss to Atalanta and things will not get any easier against a Liverpool side that beat Ajax 1-0 last week.
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Alongside long-term absentee Virgil van Dijk, Liverpool will also be without Joel Matip, Naby Keita and Thiago Alcantara for the match.
Matip and Thiago have both been sidelined since suffering injuries in the Merseyside, while Keita has only recently returned to training after a negative COVID-19 test.
Midtjylland were only founded in 1999 but Klopp downplayed suggestions of a ‘David against Goliath’ fixture.
“We don’t see Midtjylland as a small club, we see Midtjylland as a proper challenger in this group,” he said.
“No-one is part of the Champions League because they are nice cities, they are in the Champions League because they earned the right the year before,” the German added.
“There are no small teams in the Champions League, there are only teams who show how big they are on the pitch, not in the press conferences before games.”
Liverpool ride their luck
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